Dick Tracy by Mike Curtis and Charles Ettinger for July 11, 2021

A tangled web the doctors leave

Chimera altered and deceived.

Surgeries not authorized

Greedy plot not realized.

Smith discovered what they wrought

Flipped a switch he had ought not.

Space Coupe took a one-way trip

Earthly bonds the fiends did slip.

Smith has the proof and does come clean

A piece of wreckage can be seen.

Evidence crime does not pay

None do mourn their deaths today.

Good morning™, everyone!

I’m wondering whether that was a government Jupiter probe or if Smith Industries sent their own probe to Jupiter. In any case, the Space Coupe with the doctors indeed crashed on the surface of Jupiter.

As I’ve mentioned before, Jupiter doesn’t actually have a solid surface. It’s a mass of swirling gases, but I suppose it works okay in a comic strip like this. It could even be a picture from one of Jupiter’s moons, like Ganymede, the biggest moon in the solar system.

“On June 7, 2021, NASA’s Juno spacecraft made a flyby of Ganymede. The photos – one from the Jupiter orbiter’s JunoCam imager and the other from its Stellar Reference Unit star camera – show the surface in remarkable detail, including craters, clearly distinct dark and bright terrain, and long structural features possibly linked to tectonic faults.”

It’s probably Ganymede or maybe Callisto, as Europa is icy, and Io is hot with sulfur lava and molten rock. I think Mike knows Jupiter doesn’t have a solid surface.

We surmised something like that, why tell us now? And did Diet really don’t know the doctors were on the Space Coupe, or did not care?

We know the Lunarians abandoned Moon Valley. What If… they set up a new home on Europa (hey, it’s still a moon!) and the two doctors were either rescued or apprehended by them and are still alive?

It would be cool if Tracy had a team-up with Marshal O’Niel, Sean Connery’s character from the movie ‘Outland’.

On a different, incorrectly colored Sunday strip is a wonderful time to hear this boring news, especially when there’s eager anticipation to see if Honeymoon has to unleash her first slap or if Allcad has a pair! LOL!!

I just want y’all to know that I LOVE IT!!

The color pops here:

https://tribunecontentagency.com/premium-content/comics/dick-tracy/

Now, Smith can only speculate that that arm belongs to the Coupe he sent into space. We know that the Coupe went to Jupiter, but he doesn’t. Don’t the Moon people have a fleet of Coupes of their own? Maybe the control arm came from one of theirs.

Maybe we’ll get an explanation of how a Coupe flies in an atmosphere. I mean it’s about as aerodynamic as a soda can.

Well now. This is part of a story line from a few years back when the ‘Moon Maid’ first made her ‘reappearance’. Dr. Zy Ghote and his crony created her to go after Tracy and his family. Diet at the time became very introspective about creating the space coupe after that adventure was nearing the end and Ghote was on the run. He programmed the last remaining space coupe to travel to deep space, and fortunately or unfortunately, Ghote and Sail were on the coupe with no control over it. Bye bye bad guys.

So the fact that he made this statement so definitively means that the two guys are 100% definitely alive.

“You can see why I requested you to come in person. I’ll email copies of the photos to your work address.”

Okay – three story arcs, all running in parallel. Let’s see how Team Tracy ties this together…

I think we all knew the ultimate fate of those guys! No supplies, finite life support. They were always presumed dead.

Holy crap? What a side bar in the middle of two teens huddling at the movie theater?

1-DOIT JUST: C’mere Tracy. I gotta show you something…

2-…I got these pictures, purportedly from your house, in the mail yesterday.

3-DT: Interesting…

4-…looks like I need a new pipe. HA! I SEE THE PROBLEM!. I forgot to light it. I drew so hard it bent the stem and I sucked the tobacco through! Man can I draw! Oh. And my yard needs a little TLC too I guess.

5-DOIT: DAMMIT TRACY! THAT’S NOT YOUR PIPE! It’s a chunk of metal that Dr. Zy clobbered Dr. Tim with somewhere near Jupiter.

DT: YOU MEAN…? DOIT: Yes. You have a murder in space to solve.

DT: Meh…I’ll need one of those Heavy Corpses before I’ll act on that. DOIT: Are you trying to say Habeas Corpus?

DT: Whatever. Anyway, I need to see a corpse. Now, where’s my Calmgars?

I think this comic should be binge-read. Just like a comic book, it would benefit by reading it many panels at once, instead of 1 or 3 a day. As is, it feels slow and sometimes boring. Just an observation, many people enjoy reading it 3 panels per day, and that’s great for you.

We finally get some closure on the fates of Dr. Zy Ghote and Dr. S. Tim Sail.

Their inclusion in this story arc is appropriate, since it’s taking a science fiction turn. Many great SF plots involve a pair of docs.

http://instantrimshot.com/

I’ll never how me and my classmates in the 9th grade was introduced to a term called “irony”. Seems fitting to apply it to this story line. Ironic as to how Diet Smith shows Tracy this photo. Ironic as to how Mysta who was in the mix, so to say with Dr. Zy Ghote and Tim Sail is held captive within an estate. I definitely have to go to the archives for adventures that I missed.

“I think we know the ultimate fate of Dr. Zy Ghote and S. Tim Sail”. Can a broken arm from the Space Coupe confirm the theory? What happened to the rest of the Space Coupe? How can this “Cold Case” be considered closed?

A thing that made me go hmm…how long have you had these photos, Diet?

Maybe Branson can bring those guys back this weekend. I know I, like Neil, have been worried about those guys for years. Now I can rest. It’s a friggin’ CARTOON people.

An interesting coincidence that this strip runs on the same day that Richard Branson makes a flight to “the edge of space” with Jeff Bezos set to make a similar attempt in a week or so. Mega -rich guys funding private space flight? Once again, fact imitating Gould’s fiction (nearly 60 years later…)

It was established in the Mr Intro/Purdy Fallar story line that a Space Coupe could function even if it list one of its arms.

It looks like Dick needs to put on his glasses to look at the photo by how close he’s holding them to his face.

Just too many characters in this strip. Hard to keep track of.

If I remember the Sail/Ghote story arc correctly… “Flas” Munro stole and piloted the Space Coupe to help Sail and Ghote to escape capture and as they went away… Diet Smith remotely locked the Space Coupe controls and “Flash” said that he no longer had control and the Space Coupe sped away from the earth and wound up headed for Jupiter as “Flash” told Drs. Sail and Ghote…

I also remember Diet Smith not wanting to admit that he had a role in the deaths…

As Chester Gould used to tell readers in the strips back in the 60s, “The nation that controls magnetism will control the universe”.

They’re like, really spaced out, man. ;)

Once Smith started building Space Coupes, why did NASA keep trudging along with chemical rockets?

One lost magnetic control arm does not make a deadly crash! While Drs. Zy Ghote and S. Tim Sale may indeed have perished on one of the four “Galilean” moons of Jupiter, we still do not have enough hard evidence to be certain. If Diet thought this one photo would definitively close the case, he is wrong. It is circumstantial; any conclusion drawn from it assumes a great deal more than it actually demonstrates. Such assumptions may be warranted, but definitive proof is still lacking.

If Mike meant to close the case with finality, the photos should have shown the wreckage of the entire Space Coupe, not just one arm. Was this intentional?

I want to say that I look forward to reading your roll calls every Sunday like your First Responders Roll of Honor. Thank You Very Much! ;o)

so now we fly off on another wild tangent that has nothing to do with the story. Good Grief.

Dick Tracy should give up trying to write Science Fiction. They will never be able to reconcile their contradictions.

Something left out during the past week: Mysta is sufficiently stressed out that it has to broadcast telepathically, and Honeymoon is the one most likely to receive the signal. Do you want to bet that we will see Monday Honeymoon and Astor’s date interrupted by her receiving the signal?

Oh and by the way Tracy… this, in NO WAY is an admission of guilt or recognition of implication of three counts of murder in the first degree…..rrrriiiiiiiiiggggghhhhhtttt?